Upgrade - 550: The Tasty Part Inside Bad Bread

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

from relay this is upgrade episode 550 today's show is brought to you by ecam Google Gemini Oracle and factor it is February 10th 2025 my name is Mike Hurley I'm joined by Jason Snell hi Jason Snell hi Mike Hurley. I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow. Hi, Mike Hurley. 550. By the way, it means we're halfway through the, uh, it's halftime of our play through the draft of the ages for episode 600. And I went and I checked on that. And, uh, it's not looking great, but you know what? There's 50 more weeks to go.

And so maybe other things will happen, but we predicted a lot of things in episode 500 that have not come true. So, you know, roll on 2025, I guess. I will put a link in the show notes to the scorecard put together by friend of the show, Zach Knox. That is the episode 600, Draft of the Ages. Yeah, it's not looking great,

but we have a lot of time left that can exceed the time left. All to play for. So that's up there for you. For the next 50 weeks, yeah. Yep. I have a snow talk question for you to start this week's episode.

This is one of these questions that we've answered before, but it's a question that I'd like to re-answer. We get these, who knows? It was probably like five years ago that we answered this question. It's 550 episodes, man. I mean, who knows? You gotta repeat some content sometimes. Darren wrote in to say, Jason, with your latest Macbook purchase, I was curious what policy you follow for device names. Do you just go with the default like Jason's Macbook Pro? And if so, do you append a number or a year to keep them unique or do you use clever cute pet names?

Is there a theme that you follow? Darren, there is a theme that I follow. It is the word monkey. Yeah. It's lost to history, why? Okay. But it doesn't matter. They are all monkeys. We have a monkey on our house too.

Our house number is a little sign we actually bought in the UK that has our house number and it has a monkey on our house too. Our house number is a little sign we actually bought in the UK that has our house number and it has a monkey above it. Okay. Because monkeys are cool and fun and our wifi is called Monkey House because of course it is. And all my stuff is monkey.

So my MacBook Pro is MonkeyBook M4 Max. Okay. My previous laptop was MonkeyBook Air M2, I think. My phone is MonkeyPhone 16 Pro. My iPad is MonkeyPad M4. Yeah, it just goes like that. Okay. So it's only kind of like- And that's how I know. The monkeys are mine. Halfway really, right? Like you're not, every device is getting its own individual name.

No, although my server, my servers in my house have been various monkeys and apes over the years. Okay. Different kinds. So my current server is called Mandrill, which is a kind of ape. Okay. And it was given before that.

So, you know, it's a theme. You know, it's just like, I sort of was inspired by Adam and Tonya Agst, who do tidbits. And long ago when we worked closely with them on some stuff when I was back, when I was at IDG, and before even, All of their computers were named after penguins. And I thought that I was like, oh, theme. I like it. I like it. So yeah,

no. But all my personal devices are just to have a monkey in the title. That's it. It's good. I mean, it could be anything. That's just what it is. So I keep going with it. But the point is, that way I don't have Jason's MacBook Pro 8 in parentheses. Yeah, I have tried over the years to give fun names and then kind of give up because I couldn't think of new names within a theme. And so now it's all just the most boring, which is why, for some reason, my MacBook Air is just

Mike's MacBook Air 2 in parentheses. Great. I hate it. Nothing like a parenthetical. We love it. If you would like to send in a Snelltalk question of your own, it's very easy. Just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in yours to help start a future episode of the show.

Thank you to Darren for that great question. As some follow up, Kieran Healy has put together a statistical analysis of the Six Colors Report Card. The report card really is the content that just keeps on giving, right? Like we can... It is. And I'll just say, I don't know, this is probably a little gauche. I was so proud of last week's episode. I think we knocked it out of the park last week. I was so happy with it. I think we did a really good job. I really enjoyed it. It was a good time.

But Karen put this together. There are a bunch of really good looking charts that I don't understand. Yeah, the way it works is the first time I, or not the first time, one of the first times I did this, Karen Healy, I think, looked at my data or maybe asked me for data and made some charts. And so now I just sent him the data Yep, and

Before I've even posted the report card and I say feel free And he just makes the charts that please him because he's a sociology professor He's written books about charting and I just I love it because some people will love it. And because I love giving Kieran a little bit of a, a, a spot to do whatever pleases him about looking at the data. Why not? Why not?

I should probably, you know, what I should do is I should probably just post the data somewhere so that anybody can, you know, make weird charts about whatever. But, because I don't, I post all the comments, but I don't post like a list of the scores per person or anything, even though it doesn't matter. I could, I just don't. So maybe I'll do that down the road, but I do send it to Kieran at the very least.

Sigmund Judge at the Magic Rays of Light podcast is back on the Ted Lasso beat, sharing some information about Ted Lasso beat sharing some information about Ted Lasso season 4. Sigmund has said London filming is now set to begin in May or June for Focus shifting at AFC Richmond to the formation of its women's team, which is a theory that I think you've brought up on the show could be a possible thing that they could do for the show. At that point, this is not Ted Lasso, right? Like it's in the universe, but it's not, like surely can't call it Ted

Lasso at that point. Well, so here's, here's the thing. I thought that it was very clear in the last episode of season three, when Ted writes on the proof of the book about the Lasso way and Ted specifically writes, you know, you should call it about, you know, the AFC Richmond because it's not really about me. I always felt like that was the show saying and Jason Sudeikis saying, you could keep doing the show. It doesn't have to be about Ted anymore.

I think they could call the show The Lasso Way and that would solve the problem. It's a new thing. It's still got Lasso in the name. If I'm Apple, I want to retain the name recognition of Ted Lasso at all costs. So I think the reason you call it Ted Lasso season four, and honestly, the reason you get Jason Sudeikis on board, and he is apparently on board, they have said,

my theory all along has been that they're going to tell, well, I think they're going to tell a couple, two, three different interleaved stories, would be my guess. And that one of them will involve Ted. That would work. Probably in the US,

where we check in on Ted, and there's a little bit of cross between the stories, but it allows Jason Sudeikis not to spend many, many months in the UK when his kids are in America. And it lets them plausibly call it Ted Lasso and have a little bit of a mini arc for Ted about sort of settling in and what happens to Ted next, while also providing a spotlight on the other characters and maybe some new characters, if it's the AFC Richmond women's team, right? And presumably Rebecca and Keely being involved with that, because I think that was a story thread

that has been sort of like put out there as a possibility. So that's my prediction is that they will call it Ted Lasso or they'll call it Ted Lasso something, right? But it'll still say Ted Lasso somewhere in it. If he's in it, they can call it that. And what I've realizing, like I'm over indexing on this piece of information, clearly Sigmund is aware of what's happening in London, right?

Like he lives in London, he has access to this information clearly. But that does not state what else could be happening in other places. Exactly, exactly. So that's my guess. And I would like that. I think that would be good,

because all sitcoms like this have multiple concurrent stories. They don't need to be in the same physical space. And if I'm a producer, just a random producer on Ted Lasso, and I'm given these pieces of information, Apple is gonna back up a truck to Jason Sudeikis' house. We are absolutely making Ted Lasso season four. But Jason doesn't wanna spend months in London,

and we deposited Ted Lasso back at home at the end of season three, What do I do with that? That's what I just described is find a way to keep Jason mostly or entirely in America, have a Ted thread, you know, right? And have that because I think that would be nice. I think fans of the show would really like to see how does Ted take his British experience back to America

and how has he grown as a person and how does he apply that? take his British experience back to America and how has he grown as a person and how does he apply that and what are his challenges? I think there's something pretty rich there, but also you don't wanna leave all those characters that in that setting that everybody loves back in the UK. So that would be my pitch anyway, would be, let's get Jason involved in a thread that we shoot in the US. We'll build a story thread or two that's in the UK and then we will build in some crosses where

Ted talks to Beard on the phone. Ted comes to see a game, a special episode in the middle of the season where Ted shows up and everybody's happy to see Ted and Roy's been having a problem this year as the manager and he asked Ted for advice and like, you can see it. So that's my guess. It's possible that it's not that. And it really is like Ted Lasso season four is actually AFC Richmond season one, essentially without Ted in it. But that's not what I would suggest.

And I'm pretty sure Apple would insist on having as much Jason Sudeikis as possible. Yep. Just before we move on, no spoilers, but my word severance. Oh boy. Is that show good? Wow, wow, wow. I love it.

Or bow or not. Or bow or not. They are, really this is special television and I while it's killing me to wait every week, I am happy that I get to wait a week each time between each episode because they are real. This is a very, very good shit series. And if it, you know, if it got this good because they had to take this time, I'm happy they took the time. But I don't know if you saw a bit in the past week, Ben Stiller's like, we're already right in season three. Don't worry about it. It's fine.

We're not gonna wait so long. So the story is that Bo Willemann was brought on, the showrunner, to run season three. And then they had problems with season two, and so they actually reshot a bunch of season two. And Stiller did an interview last week that I thought was really good, where he talked about, and he said, I mean, it's PR,

so take it for what it's worth. But what he said is, because of the strike, just like because of COVID, we had a shutdown where, and he said he's a non-writing producer on the show. And so during the strike, he was editing episodes of season two. And he had a lot of time to consider what was in season two. And he decided it wasn't good enough, that there were some problems and the things they needed to fix in reshoots. And because they had the strike, they actually had the time to plan what they were going to do. And then when the strike was over, they did rewrites and they did some reshoots. Now we can also say, you know, there are other reports that said they're really unhappy with the guy who created the show. Although he's in all the pubs. So like he obviously didn't storm off. He's in the middle thing at the end of each episode.

Yeah, he's in all of those. But, but if there, if this was fraught, it doesn't feel like it. Although I think some of the reports were that it was sort of late season, They were grappling with some issues, but what Ben Stiller said is there was stuff that happened late in the season and he thought wasn't properly set up. And that some of the characters needed to be given a little bit more earlier on. So it sounds like maybe that's what happened. And that, that stuff happens, especially if you've got a long shoot, you do have the chance to look back and, and if you've got the budget and they have do have the chance to look back and if you've got the budget and they have the budget from Apple. Especially a show like this, where it's so heady.

Yeah, yeah, you can go back and fix that stuff. Add a few things. Ben Stiller, man, who would've thought it? You know what I mean? Who knew he had it in him, you know? The profile of him was really great. Like he grew up with his, so his parents were famous. His parents, Stiller and Merrow,

were a famous comedy team. And of course then his dad was on Seinfeld, but they were a famous comedy team. I remember them as comedy duo. And he said he was always interested in being a filmmaker. He wasn't interested in being a performer. And then, you know, a funny thing happened on the way to Ben Stiller being a director, which is he became an actor who became famous in movies. And what he said is, you know, you get the opportunity, you know, it's not gonna last, but it was an opportunity for him to do it,

to make money, to learn about filmmaking. But what he says is this is always what he wanted to be, actually, from when he was a kid, was this, being the, you know, and that is, he's not, he is a non-writing producer on the show. He's not writing the show, but he is creatively, I think, directing the show, yeah. Yeah, I mean, and he is the director of many episodes.

He is, he is, but I think, I mean, obviously, you're a showrunner, there's a, a lot of times these days in modern TV, there are often two showrunners. There's sort of like a showrunner who's in charge of the writing, and a showrunner who's in charge of the writing and a showrunner who's charged with being basically the director and setting the stage.

A lot of times directors are for hire and they're basically not the creative leads on shows. But some of these shows, especially more technical shows where there's special effects and there's a real visual look, you will sometimes have it be that there's a showrunner, writer and a showrunner director and they kind of collaborate. And that's how I feel Severance probably is. It's like I think like Ben Stiller ultimately is the boss. And he's not the showrunner in the sense that he's not the writer. But I get the feeling like he's the boss of the show and that he's the one who hired Bo Willimon and brought him in. And he was, he was, uh, Erickson's boss and like, it's his, it's his show,

even though he's not writing it. Yep. Kills the shots. Yeah, I think so. This one's a bit of a throwback. Uh, in March of last year, we spoke about a story, uh, by somebody, the name Andrew Alde, uh, who was being sued by Apple for leaking information to the Wall Street Journal. Now, most of this information was about the journaling app. So a report

about the journaling app came from this information and some stuff about the Vision Pro. Alde was using his work issue device to send messages to a, I think, Wall Street Journal reporter via Signal. And I think Homeboy was the name of the contact in the device. It's always funny. And also, again, another thing that I remember, my favorite detail of this story, because it's so ludicrous, is that when Alde was found out, he was taken into a meeting app, or he excused himself to go to the bathroom and delete quote significant amounts of evidence from his phone, but it was a work device so they had some evidence, et cetera.

Well. So it sounds like the homeboy by the way is from, is the reporter, I'm trying to look up his name from the information who then went on to work at the Wall Street Journal. Yes, good call, good call. So this was a court case that has now been settled. And part of this settlement is clearly an apology because our day and issued an apology

on X that I want to read because it is just a fascinating look in behind the current of these kinds of things. So this is the apology. I spent nearly eight years as a software engineer at Apple. During that time I was given access to sensitive internal Apple information, including what were then unreleased products and features. But instead of keeping this information secret, I made the mistake of sharing this information with journalists who covered the company. I did not realize it at the time, but this turned out to be a profound and expensive mistake. Hundreds of professional relationships I had spent years building were ruined, and my otherwise successful career as a software engineer was derailed, and it will likely be very difficult to rebuild it. Leaking was not worth it. I sincerely apologize to my former colleagues who not only worked

tirelessly on projects for Apple, but work hard to keep them secret. They deserve better. Oh, by the way, Aaron Tilly is the reporter at the Wall Street Journal, formerly of the Information, who was apparently homeboy. Yeah, nothing like deleting your signal as a sign that something bad is going on. It's always a coverup. It's always the coverup. That's the thing.

Yeah, interesting. Okay, so what's interesting about this is that Apple chose to settle and have him issue an apology. And I think that this is Apple calibrating their response for what they want Apple employees to hear, which is first off, Apple didn't like try to get this guy put in jail or bankrupt him or any of those things.

No, but his career is over because now his name is incredibly Googleable. Maybe he can do open source. Anyway, um, yeah, but, but they get the apology, which sends the message to other Apple leakers. Don't be like me. And I think that's the ultimate goal of stuff like this, is if Apple doesn't try to find people

who are leaking secret information, there's no point in even trying to keep anything secret. So this is a way of making people think twice before they send that message to Mark Gurman or whoever. Yep. Yep. Also, I'm very impressed that this one big public thing was not a Mark Gurman source, and at least that we know of. And I think that's really interesting. And it makes me, maybe it's chance, or maybe it's

just that Mark Gurman is more careful with his sources. I don't know. Well, I think I spoke about it at a time, but I have heard a story of someone losing their job. Like within the last couple of years, who was a Mark Gurman source? It happens. Ah, it does happen. When you said chance, I thought you meant Miller.

I was like, no way. Chance is the source. So no, it's moving from outside on the inside. Weird. Weird. No was like, no way. It chances the source. So it's reporting from outside on the inside. Weird, weird. No, that's no chance. It's chances enemy. No chance. Yeah. Uh, so I am here on this episode today. Uh, I am planning to be on next week's show and that actually should be my final episode of upgrade before paternity leave. Uh, yeah. If you have questions for me, send them in and we'll do some paternity focus to ask upgrade. Yeah, or if there's anything you wanna know,

go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send it in because from like my paternity leave should begin on the 24th of February, right? That is like, I'm gone that day, but who knows? Cause we are in the window now. Like, we're done. Right who knows? Because we are, we're in the window now. Like, right, right. Something could happen, could develop in the next week. Stephen Hackett is waiting. He has been scheduled. And you know, in case of podcast emergency break glass, he is ready to step in next week. If next week's episode begins with from relay,

then you'll know what happened, right? That will be how you know. Doesn't it always start with from relay? Yeah, but I did, I tried my best at doing a Southern accent that obviously did not come across. From relay. Did not come across. I see.

I see, but what if I do a little sneaky thing where I take one of your from relays from the past and put it in there and then go yoink. Oh, it's not Mike anymore. You could do that. It wasn't a very good impression. Disco is very upset at me. I didn't say it was a good impression. All I can do is like, I found that's all I can do about it. You wouldn't start the show that way. You wouldn't start the show. If you, if you want a bad impression, ask Stephen to do one of me. You know what I mean? Then we'll find out what's happening. He's catching strays now.

Anyway, it's not looking forward to it. It'll be fun to have guests, but again, I'll be very sad to not have you here. So next week, yes. And if you've got sort of like pre-baby questions for Mike, send him in and maybe he'll answer them. We've had a few That was waiting for that episode to talk about but if you have anything else like just send it in cuz As I said, you know Jason said if it's just anything you want to hear from me because otherwise you're gonna hear from me for like two months

So yeah, other than that one episode that will happen that will surprise you. Yes There's gonna be a couple of those but you know, that's past Mike. That's like pre daddy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you put Mike in chronological order, next week's will be the last one for a while.

Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Ecamm. Ecamm Live is the leading video production and live streaming studio built for Mac. But it doesn't stop there because Ecamm is great at simplifying your workflow too. You can do it all with the Ecamm app. Get started quickly and have everything on hand to create whatever you need with video.

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Ecamm Live truly does it all. I tuned in to the Six Colors report, like what is it, the earnings report livestream that you and Dan did. I am going to guess that was Ecamm live Jason absolutely Ecamm live is my chosen and then that new zoom feature that is really great because it means that I can I can like pop things into the windows and they stay there and I used to have to like carve up actual screen captures and it's, yeah. So all that stuff, all of my live streaming now

is Ecamm Live, 100%. And also it is just like a Mac app, like which is my favorite thing about it. It's a real Mac app. There are other streamers out there, they are capable. They also feel like open source software that runs on multiple platforms and has no home of their own.

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at ecamm, E-C-A-M-M dot com slash upgrade FM with the code upgrade FM, links in the show notes. Go there, check it out. Our thanks to Ecamm for their support of this show and Relay. Rumor roundup time. All right. These are for the rumors that have not been found out and made to apologize and been asked to leave the company.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No apology needed. No apology needed. Mark Gurman is reporting in Bloomberg that the new iPhone SE could be coming this week within the next couple of days. Naturally, this is something that would be announced of a press release on the website. They're not going to be holding an impromptu event for this.

As well as supporting the as well as putting Apple intelligence via the A18 chip that will be found in this device. as well as playing Apple Intelligence via the A18 chip, that would be fun. This device, Mark says that this is still expected to feature Apple's first in-house cell modem. This to me is the story. Like if this is true, I don't know how we'll find out. Someone will find out and we'll work it out. Because someone's going to do a tear down, right? And we'll find this.

Like I fix it. Whatever. Like someone's going to find out like what that chip is. Cause apple probably brand it in some way. To me, this will be the thing I'm most interested in is, well, do we get reports of the iPhone? I see you not being able to connect to the internet, you know? Like what is, because this is an important thing for apple. They've been trying to make their own modems for a really long time. They bought Intel's modem business about 100 years ago now. And we have said many times it's become almost a,

it has become a running joke on this show, that every device Apple has introduced of in the last three or four years is expected to be the first with their own modem. So if this, if they've actually done it now, this is something that they're going to want to roll out. And I will be excited to see what that looks like. So I also think, I don't think it's likely

that it's gonna be, oh no, the iPhone SE doesn't work. It is possible that one of the things that they'll say is, oh, the performance doesn't match up to Qualcomm, et cetera, et cetera. That's most likely. And if that's the case, I think the answer will be, it's the iPhone SE. It's okay, right?

It's okay if it doesn't match up. But that still tells us, if that's the case, that still tells us they can't put it in the iPhone 17. Exactly, they can put it in the iPad maybe, they can put it in a Mac if they wanted to, but it wouldn't be quite there for the rest of it. So yeah, something to watch. In a product that is otherwise being made out of,

you know, old parts, because that's what the iPhone SE is, that would be a new thing that would make it interesting. I'm also, I'm not interested in it. I'm just going to say, we will get another batch of people talking. And I'm, look, I had an iPhone Mini. This will be the end of the small phone era because the iPhone SE will be the size of the

small existing iPhones which is not that small and so we'll get another round of that too as the report card had a bunch of that in it as well. Don't think Apple's ever going to make a phone smaller than this honestly but anyway, we'll get that. Hopefully, we'll get there next. What do you think? It will be people saying, hooray, a small phone? Or like, why can't they make a small phone good? No.

Yeah, that one. Which is like, oh no, the last small phone with Touch ID is gone. And I am mad. And it's like, it is the end of an era. I'm just not looking forward to that because it's inevitable. And I know what they're gonna say. looking forward to that because it's inevitable and I know what they're going to say and it doesn't matter because it's inevitable. Mark Gurman also reports in his newsletter that we should expect to see the first developer

beta of 18.4 either this week or early next week at the latest. Now, the assumption is 18.4 will have more Apple intelligence features. So the big ones that are left, I think, is the, quote, smarter Siri that would understand your personal context, and also the control of apps via App Intense. Yep, that's it. That said, these are the two most interesting features and the hardest features that were announced last June. And what? It's February.

So yeah, we're really, I mean, we're really coming up on that year. I mean, not that it matters really, because they've kind of gotten, they've actually gotten until September. But it will be, it will be fascinating. I don't think this will happen. But I said it before, and I'll say it again. I think it will be fascinating if we see iOS 19 before all the iOS 18 features have shipped.

Yeah, I think that they'll probably all be in 18.4 and they'll ship, but I do think that the scale of them will be interesting. My guess is that we got very excited about these when they were announced in June and that they're gonna ship very limited because they're hard. Yeah, because they need to ship them. And then they will. And then they probably kicked a bunch of features out of this into 19.

Yep. That is always the way of WWDC that like you see something that seems massive. And then over time, over the following weeks, you understand as you get to use it, you kind of bring yourself down to Earth and recalibrate. They're like, OK, this is good, but it isn't the life-changing thing, or isn't the platform changing thing that I thought it could be. The problem is, when it's this far removed, I'm wondering what that's going to feel like. I know.

When Smart Siri comes out, what is that going to be like? And actually, by the way, it's something that, you know, like I've been seeing a lot of people posting about this recently. I think a lot of it was coming from something Paul Kofastis did, where they like was looking at sports scores. Yes. Although all the Superbowl results yesterday, I asked Chet GPT what time the halftime show was going to be and it gave me a very good

answer and I asked the same question to Siri and it asked Chet GPT and gave me not the same answer but also a decent answer which and it was about this Super Bowl it knew that Kendrick Lamar was playing and I found that interesting because I thought that they didn't have that much access to the current kind of data. Current events. So I don't know if maybe they tweak certain things. Obviously the Super Bowl is one of them.

You would want to get that in. But I just thought that was funny. I thought it was interesting. Or maybe I don't fully understand what the Chachypti API actually does have in it. You know? Yeah, well, this is gonna be interesting to watch because it's another, this is one of those areas

where Apple has an advantage because they built a context in that, you know, on device that they can understand that allows them to know more about your personal data set. And, you know, I think it's interesting. It's not like they're going to necessarily succeed at this, but this is one of those areas where Apple has some advantages that might benefit them as they try to catch up with the state of the art of LLMs. And Apple has indeed been working on something that's kind of like a robot arm.

Apple have released information about a research project called E-L-E-G-N-T, it's a... Elegant. Elegant, which is a robot arm slash lamp that acts and looks like the Pixar lamp Luxo, like it's got some of that kind of vibe to it The lamp essentially reacts to people and is controllable via gestures and clearly also integrates with Siri, right? That's like part of what you can do The I think that this is a research project that Apple is posting we're seeing more and more of this I think we spoke about this on connected a while back that it's basically if Apple want the best connected a while back, that it's basically if Apple want the best, they have to let them publish because they have to let them publish. So we're finding out a little bit more about

this kind of stuff at different kind of speeds. I mean, this isn't necessarily, this is not a product, but I think is very clearly showing the kinds of smart home products Apple would like to be able to produce one day. This video is worth watching for the demos of expressive versus functional. That's what the paper is about is basically what's the difference and the difference in people's reactions to a robot arm moving in a purely functional straight line and a robot arm having, you know, not moving in the most efficient way, but moving in a more organic way that a living creature might move. And how would you build that? And how do people react to the difference in approach? Truly magical product development is what this would be.

Like if they pull something like this off, my word. This, well, this is the thing that's what struck me about it is, well, that's what struck me about it is. Well, first, what struck me about it is that the expressive stuff was in many cases far too expressive. And if I like, I wanted my robot arm to point at an item on my table and it instead kind of like looked at me and then kind of came over and didn't get it right. And then kind of like had to wiggle and then finally pointed at it while I sit there and watched it.

I would be frustrated, but they're kind of overdoing it in a lot of these examples. But that is the appley kind of thing, which is we could make this robot arm purely functional, but what their research shows is that people want it to feel a little more like it flows, like it's organic, like it's alive in a way. So the purely move from point A to point B

will get you there the fastest, but it also feels like a completely like industrial robot that you might not even want in your home. So that being a little more gentle, being a little more expressive as a part of it, and that's what this research is about. And I thought that, yeah, I thought it was really interesting. My favorite part of the video demo is like that you could ask it to remind you to drink water and

there's a moment where the lamp is pushing the glass of water towards the user. Yeah. I was like that is just, that is just perfect. You're living inside a like a Disney movie or a Pixar movie. Really that is just perfect. You're living inside a Disney movie or a Pixar movie. Really, that is very special. So here's my question. Was Mark Gurman right? In his newsletter, Mark links to this and says he was quite beefy.

Oh yeah, he patted himself on the back. First to report about robots and says, ultimately, Apple's tabletop robot is likely to be something closer to a HomePod smart speaker with a screen attached to a robotic limb, but it's worth watching the video to get a sense of why such a device might have appeal. So obviously he's got connections into the people who are doing robot research, and that's why he keeps talking about robots. And he sort of doubled down in his newsletter where he's like, oh, robots, robots. My problem is I feel like he either, either he thinks this or he's saying this because of his sources, but he seems to imply a lot that robots are products.

And I think that this demo shows that robotics are features that could be in products and in fact, nobody says this will never be an Apple product, like Apple employees posting a video of a product, right? Because if that was the product, they wouldn't post that video. They would hold that paper until the product came out. They're not making a lamp. They're confident that that thing is not what they're making. But to Mark's credit, they are doing robotics research. And I think this is the way to think about it,

is not that Apple's gonna make robots, but that Apple is thinking, I mean, maybe someday there is something that is more what we would call a robot, or John Syracuse might call a robot, we'll see, who knows. Arumba is a robot, so there's lots of things that Apple could make that could be robots. So there's lots of things that Apple can make that could be robots.

The, the thing for me is robotics is a feature set and a capability that Apple needs to build up or things they might want to build up. And that's what this research is about. So that they can have it as a tool in their toolbox for products. And I think that's great because Apple is great at hardware. In fact, you know, it is the synthesis of software and hardware, but Apple especially is killing it in hardware. And this is a great example where they have robotic arm hardware, right. But the question is, yeah,

but what is the software that drives it? And what's the best way to drive it? As Mark Gurman points out, like, if you've got a HomePod speaker with a screen on an arm like a G4 iMac, and it's meant to maybe move, you would use this kind of technology to do that, right? And you'd say, can we put a little personality in it? And you do the research to say, is it worth engineering the personality? Or do people hate that? And the research seems to say, people do like it, they do like having a little more personality in there. And if you've got any other piece of hardware that can move itself down the road, you've now learned this lesson. So, you know, again, a lamp with a robotic arm obviously is not a product. And I don't think any tabletop, you know, HomePod with a screen that looks like an iMac is going to, is going to do what this thing does, because it's kind of overly theatrical and all.

theatrical and all, but that's not the point. The point is Apple is learning. What are, this is how they make that little kind of magical moment where you're like, Oh, did you notice that it did this thing and it didn't go straight there, but it overshot a little and came back. Did you notice that this is how they get there? So it's kind of fun to see, to peer a little bit into this research of, of how do we make something that feels a little more natural and less like a, you know, again, a piece of industrial equipment that might be in

an automotive factory somewhere. Yep. And it's just fascinating for all of us who have paid attention to this for any amount of time, just to see anything coming from them at all, at all, is kind of fascinating. Sure. all, at all, is kind of fascinating. Sure. This episode is brought to you by Google Gemini. I used Gemini for the first time the other day, and the most impressive thing to me was just talking to it. You go live with it, and then it's like you're just having a conversation.

You can talk about your day, you can have it explain something to you, or you can start brainstorming ideas. I'm going to give you an example. I pretended that I had a job interview coming up and asked it to help me to prepare for that interview. It immediately started suggesting common questions that I might get asked. Then I started talking through my answers out loud and it would give me feedback. And it's all happening in real time like I'm talking to a career coach. That's just what I tried first,

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Jason, I want you to give me a moment here, because there's some stuff going on in my lands here in the United Kingdom, of which I really didn't want to talk about. I mean, I posted this on Blue Sky a couple of days ago. I absolutely do not, in my last couple of weeks on the show want to be talking about encryption again, but yet here we are, especially with an issue coming from the UK. But our, our, our, our UK correspondent. I am the UK correspondent. So the Washington Post has reported last week that the UK government is trying to force

Apple to allow them to access encrypted iCloud data. The government is attempting to do this under what is called the Investigatory Powers Act, which is a law that compels companies to work with law enforcement. This is tangentially related but not the same thing as what we were talking about previously. There were all those laws that came in and then were kind of like really significantly changed before they became law about giving over certain information and trying to make backdoors into encryption. That was actually a separate thing.

They're kind of related, but they're not the same. Under this law, which is an existing law called the Investigatory Powers Act, it is illegal for a company to even say the government has asked them. So Apple is declining to comment about it. The Washington Post's report says that the UK is looking for a quote, blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account.

Now this is all related to advanced data protection. So this is something that was established a couple of years ago, where like iCloud, by default, iCloud backups are encrypted, but Apple holds the key so they can decrypt them. This is done for many reasons. The key reason being, Apple can help you recover your account if you lose your password.

If you turn on advanced data protection, everything is completely encrypted. There's also this asterisk, which I spoke about a bunch of times about iCloud, sorry, message encryption. You can turn on end-to-end encryption with messages. You can do this anyway. But if there is an iCloud backup of your messages,

it's stored in the encrypted backup that is accessible by Apple. But if you have advanced data protection turned on, like I do, Apple cannot recover it. And it is an incredibly laborious process for turning it on. You have to go through a ton of steps, which is great about trying to protect you and make sure you have all the recovery codes and setting up someone who can help unlock your account for you. It also adds in problems like we might, I think we're going to talk about, we will talk about invites before the end of this episode, the Apple invites app.

The links that people sent before I had the app installed, they just wouldn't work because when you try and access the iCloud website, it has to authenticate with another device. It makes a lot of things more complicated wherever iCloud is involved. So, advanced data protection. Apple can't access users that have this turned on if requested by law enforcement because they don't have the key. The government wants access to these users the same way that they can access other users. Now, the Washington Post is the originating source for this information. And basically every other article that I have read is referring to the Washington Post, except for the BBC. The BBC is the only outlet that, for what I can see, has done their own reporting on

this. I've been reading a bunch of them and everybody's reporting the same thing. The BBC's reporting is different. They are saying that the UK wants to have access to the data and advanced data protection if it was needed in the same way that a law enforcement agency can request iCloud data from anyone when needed. Quote from the BBC, it is believed that the government won't access to this data if there were a risk to national security. In other words, it would be targeting an individual rather than using it for mass surveillance. Authorities

would still have to follow a legal process, have a good reason and request permission for a specific account in order to access data just as they do now with unencrypted data. That is incredibly different to the Washington Post article, which says it is a blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account. Now, I'm not saying which one of those is true, but my opinion on this with common sense, I think the BBC's reporting is closer to the truth because what the government is not asking for, it appears even from the Washington Post article,

is that they want this kind of access to non-advanced data protection accounts. It doesn't appear that that request has changed because this is the case in most places in the world that law enforcement agencies can go to Apple or go to Google and say, hey, we have this person, we have this warrant, we need the information from this account. And if Apple can access it, they will. This is the thing that is just known. But if they can't, they won't, there have been a list of instances over the years where apple said no right so i think if the uk still pushes on this subject

when and what is being reported is it's most likely apple will just pull advanced data protection from uk users like they'll just get rid of it however the investigatory powers act states that the government can make these requests about individuals worldwide, which obviously I guess they're currently doing, but that wouldn't be possible. So I don't really know what's gonna happen here. This is very sticky. And like even me saying that I think it's this and not that, I know some people are already in the discord, everyone's upset.

I have advanced data protection turned on because I want true end-to-end encryption, because I believe everybody has the right to true end-to-end encryption. And I don't want anyone getting access to my data. But I think that this story is not necessarily being reported correctly is my feeling on this.

I think the BBC is closer to the truth because this is what the government here and many other governments are doing around the world. Like governments request information from iCloud backups during investigations and they get it. And what they don't get is what Apple can't give them. And advanced data protection is a new example get is what Apple can't give them. And advanced data protection is a new example of stuff that Apple can't give them.

Right. So I, again, listen to me carefully here, all right? I see where the, if this is the truth, I understand why the government is asking for this because what they want is what they think they're entitled to get, which is access to users information if they commit a crime or they're a threat to national security. But I don't want Apple to acquiesce on this, but I also don't know where it goes from here.

It's hard. The worldwide thing, it's hard to say, right? Because does the UK really have the right to say anybody anywhere in the world, we want this information? Well, I think whether you like it or not, I think the answer is yes, because that is the law here. They can ask. And yeah, they ask.

They always ask, and then Apple will tell them yes or no. I think that's the way it's always been. I don't think that is any, I don't think this is any different. I think it's already been that way. And I will say, I mean, look, I know this is like, this is good actually with me and you. Do you really believe the American government

doesn't do that too with Apple? Like this isn't a UK thing. Like I just wanna- No, but leaving aside, but the difference is that if you're end to end encrypted, Apple can't do anything. Correct. And if you make the law that you can't be end-to-end encrypted without Apple holding a key,

because we want to be able to ask you to use your key, then that's not end-to-end encrypted anymore, right? No. It's encryption with Apple having the ability to listen. It's the situation we're already in in so many other ways, where Apple has the ability to unlock that encryption and unlock that account. And so I have a couple of things I wanted to say here.

One is it doesn't matter at all if the UK government says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is just for individuals, not for mass surveillance. And we'll go through a legal process in secret and a court in secret in order to get information in secret and nobody can say anything. The difference between that and being able to surveil everybody anywhere at any time is zero, effectively. It's zero because once the box is open, the box is open.

So I find that funny that that's the, I mean, that's PR, right? That's PR spin. That's like, oh, no, no, no, no. It's just for bad actors in national security emergencies. It's like, well, you say that, but as we have learned in the United States, right? There are lots of things that you can say,

but then people can just decide to do something else. And that has happened time and again. And when it's all secret, you know, there's no scrutiny. There's no way to say, wait a second, I don't think that that was right, because nobody even knows that it happened. So that's kind of ridiculous. But my point is none of this is new.

Like this part is not new. This is happening. I just want to say that the government's making an argument here that is silly and we can discount it because it doesn't matter whether it's for a blanket capability for everything or whether it's targeted on individuals. I mean, that's nice and all, but if they want it to be,

if they want to look at whoever they want for whatever reason, once the box is open, they can do that no matter what they say. So that's one thing. And then the other thing is, yeah, what happens with, with advanced data production? And I think if I had to make a guess, if I look at what the UK is doing, and I know that there are the, you know, it's the five I's, like, there's a connection to all the other kind of major Western powers and that they share, they share a lot of Intel. I look at this and I think to myself, probably where we're headed is that

if you want an encrypted cloud service from a major company, they will have the key and respond to requests from governments to unlock it. Yeah. I think that's where we're going. I think it's going to be unavoidable that every tech giant, every major company, not even tech giants, every major company is going to be forced to be in that situation that like you said, we've largely been in for a while now, where they hold a key. And when a responsible government official comes to them and says, unlock this key, or

use this key to unlock this data, they will say, Did you check the box? Did you is it signed? Got it. Here's the data. And that's it. And if you're somebody who wants to share data in secret, without somebody else having a key, you're going to end up having to, first you're gonna go to smaller companies that offer this, and then they're gonna be forced to do this. And then you're gonna go to kind of semi-random apps that are out there, and then they're gonna be forced to do this or be removed from stores.

And that's where it's going to go until we're back where we were in the 90s, which is if you want to compile it from source, you can do it, but nobody's going to make it easy and it's going to be more like pirating things. It's going to be underground and it's gonna be questionable whether it's trustworthy or not. And the net result of that is gonna be that the people who they really, really, really, really wanna catch will go underground and use encryption.

And everybody else will use encryption that's got a key and it'll be unlockable by that. And that'll be every regular person. And at that point, we'll be back to the status quo, which is in the name of protecting the bad guys, all the other non-bad guys will be wide open for whatever the government wants to do. And the real bad guys will find a way. Again, there'll be some dumb bad guys who still use it and think that they're totally protected and they'll get caught. And there'll be people who commit a crime in the heat of the moment and didn't ever have any, you know, security thoughts and they'll get caught.

And that's fine. Right. But like the worst of them, you know, your, your global terrorist organizations and things. They'll just know that this isn't a way to store data if they don't already know it, frankly, and will go somewhere else. And that's just how it's gonna be.

So like, you know, as well, like, you know, I think advanced data protection is probably gonna go away. I think that's what's gonna happen. And I remember, do you remember before this came around there was a story? It's impossible for me to try and find it by googling right now because everything is just giving me this story Where Apple wanted to turn on encryption for everyone but was stopped by the government US government Do you remember this story this happened a couple of years ago that they this is what they wanted to do and Were basically told don't don't do that. Yeah, that this is what they wanted to do and were basically told, don't do that.

Yeah, that was a report. I don't know whether that was confirmed or not, but that was a report. It sure passes the sniff test though, doesn't it? Right? For these reasons, because I think what I think is going to happen here- You can do it, but please don't turn it on. What I think will happen here with the UK is either Apple will turn off advanced data protection for the UK or what I think will probably end up happening is this particular request goes away because

the whole point of what we're hearing now is the attempt at trying to drum up some support for Apple and then people like us say you shouldn't do this. And then also it will go through the same thing that it went last time, which is what you are asking for is impossible. We cannot give you a key for users that have ADP turned on, because there isn't one. So the only way to do this is to turn it off. So I think that's probably what will start. And again, as you said, look, the UK is not like this lone bad guy here, toadling in its mustache. Every government wants this. Maybe this is just the first one to request it. And the other thing that I find really funny about this is the like, and look, I

get it, right? Trust me, I get it. The idea that it is illegal for Apple to say they've been asked. Yeah, but how do we know? How do we know? Right. Well, how do we know this happened? Like, yes, it is illegal for Apple to be, to Apple to say that they've been asked about this, which is a terrible law, but we know about it. So someone has told someone at the Washington Post, who do you think that was? I don't know.

I mean, it could, it could be somebody in the UK who finds this development distressing, right? Because there's some technical people who might look at what the politicians are doing or what the law enforcement people are doing and say, oh, god, this is terrible. Or it could be secondhand, too. It could also be somebody who talked to somebody inside,

let's say, the US government about what was going on. And then that leaks to The Washington Post. That seems like a place where it could leak. But it certainly benefits Apple to get this out there because in the general conversation, we get to have that, like, look, the law enforcement is not above using scare tactics to get its way.

It's not, it's absolutely not. A lot of law enforcement. But this is a little bit, this is a little bit like when we talk about why does Apple fear competition in App Store or whatever. And the answer is, well, you know what's better than competition is no competition, zero competition. Well, you know what's better than trying to have to scare the public into going along

with whatever your ramped up security measures are, is not telling them anything because it's secret, right? It's better if it's secret. Then there's no story about it. Then there's no controversy. Then there's no chance for a politician in your government to say, wait a second, maybe we need to rethink this because now it's politically charged. And even though, you know, I want to let my intelligence service do what they want, now I need to say you can't because it's become a political issue.

It's better if it's all in the shadows. So if this was, and this was in the shadows, wasn't it? And so somebody told somebody who told the Washington Post. Maybe they used Signal. Yeah, probably did. So I will make it very clear. I think everyone should have the right to encryption. And I take advantage of that right and want it to remain this way.

For me, this story is interesting for the meta now, because the thing I find most fascinating about this story is I have found two original reports that exactly conflict each other. I know what one I think makes the most sense to me from a common sense perspective, which is the BBC's report, but I think this is an example of the kind of thing that is already happening a lot and is only going to happen a lot more, which is like, what do you believe? I know where I believe, and everybody else can make up their own mind, but I thought that was fascinating.

And one of the ways, my last piece of information for why I believe, why I think the BBC's report makes sense, their article changed significantly over the last seven days, where initially it was, it was kind of reporting on it, giving some background and was kind of, you know, just saying what the Washington Post had said. Now they say we have spoken to our sources and it's this. Right. Right. So, fascinating.

Yeah, yeah. It's an ongoing story of our time. And I think there's been some hope that the internet and encryption means that it's easier to send coded messages essentially and have privacy in conversation with other people electronically and to have privacy in your documents

that are stored in the cloud because those are important to us. And on your devices, obviously, but I think the biggest issues are with communication and with cloud storage. And legally, right, I can say at least in the US, legally, there is some understanding of like, what is yours and should remain private,

that you should remain private. And the most extreme version of this is, the only thing private is what's in your head. And, and then there's a spectrum that goes to or on your device, or maybe goes to or is in your personal cloud files. What this, you know, I agree, I think the most likely scenario here is that globally, if you're using a major provider, the governments of the world are all going to agree that your right to privacy, your absolute right to privacy, that can't be uncracked, is not going to be available for messaging or the cloud. That leaves you with your own personal device and we'll see what happens with your own personal device, right? Like the US government has wanted very badly to have Apple have a way to unlock a suspect's phone. And Apple has sort of resisted that and they use bugs to do it instead, right?

But there's nothing stopping governments from saying, well, no, Apple, you actually need to build in a key for us to unlock those devices, which the FBI certainly has said that it should do. At which point we're back to, sadly, the truth, which is either you come up with your own code or use some sort of surreptitious encryption that is not broadly available, or you keep it in your own head.

And that's a shame because our brains are offloaded encryption that is not broadly available, or you keep it in your own head. And that's a shame, because our brains are offloaded into our phones these days, but we may end up back there. And that's unfortunate. This episode is brought to you by Oracle. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere, from self-driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency.

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This is a hard one for me to have a take on really. Like, look, Apple, Apple makes from time to time Apple makes apps. Yeah. And I don't mind that. I kind of like the idea. This is like, it's almost exactly a year since the sports app. Right. I talked to Eddie Q the day after the Super Bowl about the sports app.

Right. So it's almost exactly a year. That's like from time to time, maybe once a year Apple kind of randomly releases an app and it's weird. Cause like why, but it almost feels like a demo that's like, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is what happened is it came out of any Q's group, right? surprised that this is what happened is it came out of any Q's group, right? And they're like, what do we do to show best practices of like, we've got all this

great stuff like playlists, shared playlists, and we've got our weather infrastructure now. And we've got our photo sharing infrastructure in iCloud. Could we build something that like shows how all of those things can be integrated in a wonderful way for something like an invitations app? And I've heard some people say it feels almost like a WWDC demo app, polished all the way. But, you know, it's so on one level, it's really weird that the platform owner is doing this. And that I'm sure somebody out there is is grumpy about the that, like, well, you should just make all these APIs available

and let anybody do it, which maybe they do, I don't know. They built it on iCloud as well, because you've got to have a web service backing this, because not everybody is going to have the app and you want to be able to invite those random people to your kid's birthday party anyway. It seems fine. It seems like a perfectly nice app.

I don't, I mean, it does the job and looks nice and doesn't force people to download an app in order to respond. And so, okay, like, I think it's weird that it requires iCloud Plus. So you have to pay, you have to be a paying member of iCloud storage. You can't just have the five free gigabytes, right? Just to create them, right? To create them, right. Oh, anybody can respond. You don't have to even have an iPhone. It doesn't matter. It's just to create them. But, you know, like, again, it probably came out of that group. It probably is a showcase for iCloud features. That's probably why they built it. I don't know. Like, it's a thing that exists. Will they update it? I don't know. Like it's a thing that exists. Will they update it? I don't know. Is it mission critical? Absolutely not. Is it meant to be a killer of other apps? I don't think so. I'm a little surprised that this isn't just part of calendar, but you

know, I don't know. I mean, it's weird, right? Like I doubt whoever worked on this was otherwise going to be working on Apple Intelligence, though. I will just say that. I think this is more of the Apple that is sort of trying to demonstrate some apps that it wants to exist and tie into its services. And so, you know, fine. It does a good job of that, right?

Like as you say, like, I think it feels like a WWDC demo because WWDC demo apps do this, which is use all the system components. And there aren't many apps that use all the system components, but this one does, and it does a good job of them. It's a very nicely made application. It's just, you know, it's not one that I imagine using. I don't have this. I've heard from people, we spoke about this on connected and we got a wide variety of follow up that we're going to talk about in the next episode. Ranging

from like, you have no idea what you're talking about to have you heard of this app or not? And it's like, I don't send invites to things. It's not a thing that I do. I think there are certain stages of life in which it happens a lot. And that's why I keep coming up with your kid's birthday party is you get a list of 20 kids and their parents' email addresses

and you're inviting them to your birthday party and you used to use Evite for that and it's kind of filled up with junk. And this thing is from Apple. It has no ads in it. You can just put all of that in, generate a link, email it to all those people saying, hey, come to this thing.

Not have to worry about what their device is because they'll be able to respond on the website and it'll look nice. And like, why, I'll say, if I was in that position, why wouldn't I use this app? It's there and it's fine. It's not like, there are lots of other options you could use, but they made one that's nice.

As far as it goes, it's fine. There are times in your life that you might do that and you are about to enter one. Yep. So we'll see. Yeah, I mean, I haven't experienced what it is like for someone who's not an iPhone user to get this. And so I would be, I mean, I will try it before if I was ever going to use it. It's fine because you tap and it opens it

in a webpage and it does an email verification. So you put in your email and it sends you a verification link in your email. And you tap that. It's typical passwordless login. If you have an Apple verification link in your email and you tap that, it's typical passwordless login. If you have an Apple ID associated to your email, they ask you to log in, but otherwise you just tap and then you're in. My issue of all these kinds of things, my issue with this thing is the same as with many,

which is I'm always like so nervous to be that guy, you know, that like I'm gonna send the Apple thing. Like that if everybody else uses something else, we've heard a lot about this, and I've heard a lot now about this app called Partyful, which is, it does this, this is their thing, they do this, and they have apps on all platforms. And so it's like, if everybody inside of a group, right,

let's say like everybody in the kids' classes, like their parents are sending apps, are sending invites via Partyful, I don't wanna be like, hey gang, let me introduce you to Apple invites. You know what I mean? I'm nervous. I think it'll be all over the place though. I think you're gonna get invites.

I think you're gonna get people who literally send an email. Yeah, that's true. I think you'll get WhatsApp groups. I think you'll get all sorts of different. Yeah. Right? I think all of those things are gonna be out there cause this is a very fractured kind of space.

And this is just another one of those. That's the way I would view it. I would use this. Because I think it's actually really nicely implemented. Like, you know, in the past couple of days, I've had reminders for a bunch of fake events that my friends set up a week ago. And like, I like stuff like you set up an event

and it's like, oh, the weather will be like this on this day, most likely based on trends that Apple weather has like all these little touches. I just, I think a really nice. And then if you are in the Apple ecosystem, there's a bunch of stuff you can do right like you can share the photos, you can share the music and all that kind of stuff together. But if you're not, it's just like, hey, here's your information. I don't know about like if it I have no idea like if you're not If you don't have the app installed if you're an Android Windows user Does it do anything to remind you that the event is coming because like on the phone it sends you a notification So I tested this there's a calendar link that will let you add it to a calendar That's like a calendar link of a standard I think it's like an ICS or whatever that will let you open it in your calendar

and add it as an event. You don't get like updates and stuff, but I think that's true maybe of it in general. Although actually, no, you'll get an email because what I did is I made a fake event called Fun Times for the Super Bowl. I invited a bunch of people. And then right before the Super Bowl I canceled it and

Everybody I invited got a notification that it had been canceled. So you it will I know well in the fun times We're outlawed. Sorry, no fun turns out But that is it was gonna be a flash mob. It was gonna be at Union Square in San Francisco I was gonna be the only person there and I wasn't gonna go either. So nobody was gonna be there I canceled it And they got notified I was going to be the only person there, and I wasn't going to go either. So nobody was going to be there. I canceled it. And they got notified. So I think that once you get your email address in there, like they will keep you or you're doing it by text. If you invite people by text,

it is notifying you that there are changes happening to the event. I don't think they can do the magic where they send you a magic calendar link that like opens in your calendar and stays updated. I don't think they're doing anything like that because I don't think that exists, but they are keeping you up to date in whatever method they have of doing it.

So again, it seems to be essentially like an invite or any of these other apps or services that do this, except this one happens to be from Apple. Yeah. This discussion about invites was like the tasty part inside of bad bread. Because we've got another big thing to talk about. We spoke about encryption, now we're going to talk about notarization. So last week, Altstore announced that they were adding an app called Hot Tub to Altstore. So Altstore is an alternative app marketplace in the EU run by the developers of Delta.

Now Hot Tub is an app that lets you search for pornographic content from various websites. It is essentially a native app which is an aggregator of adult content. When AltStore announced this app, and they announced it themselves, and they did some interviews, and they obviously sent out some press releases, they stated that it was the quote, first Apple approved porn app for the iPhone,

which of course angered Apple, who sent out a statement to any media outlet that would receive it, saying they are, quote, Yes, deeply concerned about the safety risks of such an app and that they do not approve of this app and would never offer it in the App Store and that they are required by the European Commission to allow it. Altstor's response to this was to clarify and share screenshots that their notarization request that says the app is quote approved, which is unfortunate.

And to point out that Apple has rejected several apps from being allowed to be distributed by Alt Store. And they also said to be perfectly clear Apple is not endorsed hot tub in any way. However, they did approve it. Yeah, they did not approve of it, but they do approve it because their language says they approve it. Yeah. I, I wrote this, my headline was Alt Store pokes the bear because I think

Alt Store is very specifically. Well, if I, if I back up and think about it holistically, I think app Alt Store knew that Apple would make a big deal out of this. Absolutely. Because we talked, two years ago we talked about how it was inevitable that something would happen in Europe that Apple didn't like and Apple would use it as a way to point out how unfair the European rules are because it prevents Apple from filling the blank.

And how it makes European Union customers less quote unquote safe. Less safe. I thought it might be malware or stolen information or something like that, but I should have thought it's going to be porn. That's what it's going to be. Always is. But, but, but make no mistake. Apple has been waiting for this moment,

anticipating this moment to go full out attacking this and decrying it because politically, from a PR standpoint, this is their moment to say, see what the mean people made us do and now there's porn on your iPhone, they ruined it, right? That's what they're trying to do here. If I'm Alt Store, if I'm rally tested and other people who work on alt store,

I know that they're gonna do that. So while I could say, oh, you might not wanna taunt Apple by saying first Apple approved porn app, I can see the other side of it, which is they were gonna make a big deal about it anyway. So just lean into it. It's probably not as a human being, probably not what I would do to taunt Apple with this. Apple pointed out like there's a line in the notarization guidelines that says, do not

suggest or imply that Apple is a source or supplier of the app or that Apple endorses any particular representation regarding quality or functionality, then again, Apple doesn't do that. All they did was approve it for sale. And, and this is the point that really bugged me and that I wrote about at length in this piece that I wrote last week. And that Ulster also pointed out,

Apple has already used this pathway to block apps it should have approved because it didn't like them, but it let this one through. Why is that? And I think the answer is, I mean, it's probably complicated, but one of the reasons is Apple wants this to happen so they can point at it and say, see what they made us do. It's funny because they did, you know, but an emulator that lets you play old Mac games

or run ancient Mac software that they just said, no, we refuse, which I would argue is against all the rules and they should have put it through too. But they didn't. It's and I think that was a huge mistake because I think Apple first off ruined notarization as a concept because it was always since they introduced it for the Mac, supposed to be neutral. And now it's suddenly a lever that they can pull when they just essentially de facto rejected those emulators from AltStore

and from alternative app distribution in the EU because they said so, which is completely counter to what the DMA is supposed to do. But then, to have this happen and say, oh no, look, they ruined the iPhone with porn, we couldn't stop it, our hands are tied. It's like, it's a lie. They could stop it, their hands aren't tied,

because they've pulled the lever before. It's just a lie. And why did they lie about it? It's because they wanna be seen as the victim of the DMA in this instance, which is the best one possible for them, which is Apple's trying to protect your children from pornography. And although Apple made a statement, Apple also made a bunch of things that were on background in that email. And I'll just say, that's where they say, oh, you should know that, like, they've also got Fortnite on AltStore, and that means it's popular with kids, and now there's also porn there, and porn is involved with human trafficking. Unbelievable that Epic, Epic catch, catches a stray in this press release from Apple. Oh, and, and AltStore, follow the money, Mike, AltStore got that grant from Epic.

So Epic is behind the whole thing after all, is the insinuation that on background, a large tech company that's upset about this might make, like it's all there. And, and so make no mistake, Apple was waiting for this moment. It's the maximum leverage for them to say that they are the victim of over-regulation in the EU EU and now porn is on an app store and it ruins your phone and it ruins your

children and it ruins life as we know it. No one can recover from this. We're all soiled. And their hands are tied and there's nothing they can do except for the fact it's like they lift up their hands to say, look at our hands being tied, and they're not tied, because they're not tied. They're not tied. Legally, they should have let the emulators through too. And then if they had a problem with it, they should have sued or threatened or whatever to get them taken down or withdrawn by the developer. But instead, they refuse notarization, which is entirely not what is allowed legally in the EU and entirely undercuts their argument here. So in the end, my take on this is Apple absolutely approved hot tub.

Apple approved porn in an app store in the EU. And the reason that it's doubly that they approved it is there are other apps they haven't approved. There are other apps that they used notarization to kill and they didn't kill this one. They didn't choose to kill it. They let it through. Why did they choose to let it through? Because they've lost the ability to seem powerless now and they screwed that up. That was an enormous screw up on their part tactically. and maybe nobody cares about those dumb emulators for old Mac stuff but like it entirely undercuts their argument here yeah by you exactly what you're saying I agree completely by proving that they could

reject it means everything they don't is an approval. And here's the thing. My take on this, the AltSlaw team, this is what they knew was going to happen. Everybody played it the way everybody thought was the best thing for them. So I believe AltSlaw did this thinking Apple would approve it, or like hoping that they would approve it

because then they could say all of this about notarization and then Apple gets it and they're like, Oh, we go to approve this one. We've been waiting for it. And yeah, they both hilariously end up getting what they want, but it's kind of, I think Apple loses here really, at least they lose the PR game. This actually may help their ground game. I don't know, right? I honestly don't think so. I think this is, so let's leave aside the notarization question, which I think entirely undercuts Apple's entire argument

and makes their argument seem just that much more sad. Do we think that the world at large, and Europe in particular, is going to be convinced that a tech giant shouldn't be regulated because pornography exists. Especially since I can think of, well, first off, as people point out, lots of gambling in the app store. Apple doesn't care. Violent things in the app store, they don't care. Porn, they care. But also, X, Reddit, Tumblr, full of porn. And also, literally, your web browser,

which Apple makes, is full of pornography, because the internet is. So is this the slam dunk that Apple seems to think it might be? I don't believe so. I don't think that the European Commission is going to say, you're right. We shouldn't regulate this tech giant and have it completely control its entire platform because things that are on the internet might

also be in an app store. That's not Apple's app store. Like it's a ridiculous argument anyway, but it's undercut by the fact that Apple made the mistake of breaking the sacred, I would almost say, rules of notarization, which is they're only meant to be protection and they are not meant to enforce policy. And they use them to enforce their policies and arbitrarily reject some apps. And so they got to own it with hot tub. Apple did approve it. It's the first Apple approved porn app, 100%.

That's what it is. And you know, that's where we are. So Apple can go ballistic on this and they did. Yeah, they went nuclear. By the way, I want to mention something here. I want to mention something important, which is, and this is me putting my journalist hat on. I replied to Apple PR about this statement

and specifically asked them how it was different from the two previous examples of notarization, which were withheld, and why Apple chose to approve notarization for Hot Tub versus those other apps and how the policy differed. And I'll let you know if I ever hear a word back from Apple about that, which I'm telling you dear podcast listeners, I didn't put this part in my story, but I'll say it here. They never ever, ever, ever will because they have no good answer because their whole argument

is bogus. They have no good answer for this that does not exactly contradict the whole thing that they're making this big song and dance about. But I don't think the big song and dance even is that big, because it literally is like, oh no, pornography is on the internet, and it's in an app store that's not the app store,

but a different app store. This is how it is supposed to work. The Apple standards don't have to be everyone's standards. And if you disagree with Apple on app store standards, you can choose a place that has maybe more, is more aligned with your philosophy. Like that's the whole point. But Apple's whole argument is like, ah, porn, icky, boo, scary, get it out of there. That's why we're here to protect you.

It's incredibly paternalistic. And I think it entirely misses the point of the DMA, which is to say you are welcome to have that opinion in your app store, but not anywhere else on your platform where other people get to decide what they want. And so, I mean, again, this, Mike, this incident goes to the heart of the part of Apple, the policy part of Apple that I hate the most and that we've discussed here. And it is Apple's desire for complete control and a paternalistic attitude toward what it wants to make on the App Store. And also, let's just say it as a part of that,

to make huge amounts of money by tariffing every single thing that happens in the App Store. That's what's going on here. So this is the worst of Apple, I think. And this statement comes from that place, the most cynical, controlling, paternalistic part of Apple. This episode is brought to you by Factor. Are you feeling ready to optimize your nutrition this year? Factor has chef-made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. They're dietitian approved and ready to heat and eat in two minutes so you can feel right and feel great no matter what life throws at you. Factor arrives fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active busy lifestyle. And Factor Keto meals can help you meet your weight loss goals.

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It's time for some ask upgrade questions to finish out today's episode. First comes from Lee, who says, with DeepSeek, we're seeing people running models locally on their Mac minis and looking to chain them together as it seems the Mac mini at £599 or Leah's I guess from the UK is the cheapest way to get a 16 gigabyte graphics card or a 64 gigabyte. Uh, I mean, I'm, I'm really messing. I said 16 gigabit. Wow. Look at me go. The 16 gigabyte card, graphics cards don't exist. No. Okay. All right. So what okay what?

Lee is saying so I've done a bad job of explaining this it is essentially a 16 gigabytes graphics card because this unified system memory Means you can access all of the RAM when you need it and like this is not a thing that exists So you can go thinking about you can go all the way up to 64 gigabytes and it will cost less than an Nvidia 5090. So what Lee is asking, so essentially that is the premise of the question. Like you can have with unified system memory, you can have a ton of RAM essentially thrown at a graphics card, which is not a thing that you can do in the PC space because they don't use unified system memory.

Like a graphics card has its own onboard RAM and it's usually not very much compared to something like this. So what Lee is asking, do you think Apple could now push through with an M4 Ultra Studio, say with 192 gigabytes of RAM and have a product capable of dominating the AI training space? That is the question. Yeah, that's a lot of question. Here's what I'm gonna say. I'm gonna not answer the question other than to say,

cause I don't know a lot about the details of specs of these various things. I'm not sure how many people do. I, first off, I don't think Apple cares about dominating the AI training space. I don't think they care. I think they would if they did. Right?

Yeah, but I mean, I don't think dominating is gonna happen, but I do think that if Apple would be happy if there was a trend toward having training that could happen on more affordable systems, because that might mean people started doing things like training things on Macs, and that would make them happy. I think the most important thing about stuff like DeepSeq is that it opens the door to being able to run AI instances

also on lighter weight systems, and that's great for Apple because Apple has those. And so, you know, the more on the running side, the better. And if yes, you could be a developer who is working with these models or trying to train these models, and you can do that with cheaper hardware, and that cheaper hardware is a bunch of Apple Silicon Macs, I'm sure Apple would be happy about that, but I don't think that that is their primary,

the primary thing about the DeepSeq model being kind of low resources that interests me, and I think interests Apple, which is the idea that it gives Apple an advantage on hardware, that more sophisticated things can be done not in the cloud, but on device. So I have a friend who is pretty connected to this space, like to the AI space. And something that he told me recently is like, people are very excited about Macs now because of the potential gains that something like DeepSeek can show. So in the way that DeepSeek is upset the AI world, it's also looking great for Apple because it is looking like now people will be able to do much more

advanced stuff locally and having access, like I'm running training runs more locally or with, with, uh, uh, less intense machines, less like less requirements for these hundreds of graphics card, thousands of graphics cards. And that max now seem more, uh, um, interesting because you could potentially do more, you know, you could get an M4 Ultra Studio with 190 gigs of RAM and you now have a very capable AI machine because it has access to all of it. So it's interesting. Look, so what Apple, you know, universally thought as being behind in AI, one of the

ways that Apple could end up having some advantages on the field is that some of the assumptions about what AI was going to be and what resources it was going to take might be wrong. And I think that that's what the deep-seek stuff is at least suggesting is possible, is that things that Apple is not as good at might not be as relevant and things that Apple is good at might be more relevant. And for a company that is trying to come from behind and is trying to figure out where it fits in this, the more that the AI conversation plays to the shared RAM, plays to Apple Silicon, plays to the neural engine,

the more that the drift of the AI industry goes toward things Apple is good at, obviously, the better for Apple. Doesn't mean that they don't have to execute. Doesn't mean that they're not necessarily behind. But I do wonder sometimes that all the cloud companies are like, oh man, AI is a cloud story. We're going to kill it in the cloud. And I do wonder if we are going to see another version of what we

saw when computers went from mainframes to personal computers, which is all the cloud companies are saying that because of course they're saying that. But what happens if in five years, this stuff all just runs on your devices and you don't need the cloud for it at all. Or you need the cloud for only a small amount of it. That would benefit Apple. Alan writes in and says, I swear I remember there being a new feature in the Home app where you can pick the Home Hub you want to use, but I have been unable to figure out how to do it. It's really annoying when it moves to a hub that is not near my front door and my home lock decides not to work.

I have to unplug all the hubs except the one I want to use. So I found this accidentally recently. So I'm gonna give the steps. You go to the home app, you hit the little three dots on the top right. You go to home settings, home hubs and bridges, turn off automatic selection, then you can choose your hub. Now it's settings, home hubs and bridges, turn off automatic selection. Then you can choose your hub.

Now, it's worth noting home hubs now are on the Apple TVs or HomePods. They used to also be iPads, but that's not the case anymore. It's Apple TVs or HomePods. The reason I found this was I have spoken before I have to. Eve radiator controls that like they actually turn on and off a radiator valve in my studio. I have two radiators here and they weren't responding and I didn't know why.

And I was at home and it was cold in the studio and I wanted to warm up before I got here. So I was playing around in the home app and I found this and essentially me changing home hub was almost like rebooting it in a way. And so it then kind of like the home reconfigured itself and it found them. So that's how I found it. And then I also ended up changing it to my HomePod mini which is more reliable than my original HomePods. So I also had this recently, I had things that were showing up as not connecting. And I found that automatic selection

had decided that the best home hub for me was a HomePod mini in my bathroom. Yes, but. And I have an Apple TV 4K connected via ethernet in my living room directly into the switch that is on my internet. And I thought, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing?

So I turned off automatic selection, put it on the Apple TV. It's been pretty much rock solid since then. So there you go, Alan, I hope that helps. And I hope that you're not locked out. Maybe, do you think Alan was sending this from outside their house? And like, they're really hoping for a fast response?

Most, most smart locks have like an alternative mode, but not all. I hope so. Mine has a keypad, so I can put in a code and get in. Maybe they forgot the code. Maybe, or maybe it's not that kind of luck, right? Maybe it's not that kind of luck. The first smart lock I had, it had a,

their question was what happens in an emergency if you lose if the batteries die How do you get into your house? Yeah now my current lock my current lock There's a key so you could bring a key with you and actually put it in the lock and turn the lock and it will It will unlock it's great Well, I imagine I'm not saying you what I imagine most people do is get one of those key rocks and put the key in The key rock and put it in the garden. Well, they might do that. What I did, I actually had this happen where the batteries died in it and I had to go to the store and buy batteries, but I couldn't lock my house. So what did I do? I took the key and I locked the door and then I left with the key. And when bought some batteries,

came back, unlocked the door with the key, put the batteries in and then the lock fun. My previous smart lock though, had at the very bottom underneath up against the door, it had two little circles that you could stick a nine volt battery in. You jump it, you jump start. You stick that nine volt battery in there and then it's powered and then you can unlock it. You get some cables, you connect it to your car battery. What are you doing? You know, you just see it's going to blow that door at the kingdom come. This one, they just provide a key. So it's great. It's great Stepan asks the discussion of the new iPhone I see coming and the constant sadness of iPhone colors and the rumors of a plastic

Apple watch se I have been wondering is it time for Apple to attempt a plastic iPhone again. What do you think? I mean they could that would be interesting I think Apple feels like the metal look is their metal and glass look is their branding for iPhone now. And that that's what says iPhone and that, that, that I, I think it would take a lot now because basically since the, uh, what the five S and, you know, before that it was a threeG and a 3GS like plastic phones don't say iPhone so I think that they would be very reluctant to ever do that. I think

as well that the problem you will always have here is people they attribute weight to price and if you give them something very light and tell them it costs $900, there might be a bit like what you're talking about. Unless there is a reason that like you can see it's super thin, right? Super thin? Ooh, how nice. And then it can be super light. But if you just give them like a plastic iPhone 16, be like, why is this thing so light?

What is going on here? Like people have that, like, there is like a weight and a heft and a value, they kind of go together. I think that would be difficult for them to try and shake. It's not necessarily logical, but like, you know, you can logic this if you really wanted to, but it's like, it's perceived value and it's the brand identity, right?

Those are the things that end up mattering. And Andrew writes in to say, the rumor is the iPhone 17 line could be eSIM only. Yet here in the UK, we mostly still use physical SIMs. I'm with EE and could swap to an eSIM, but never have as I haven't needed to. Do you think Apple will force through the change here in the UK or still keep the physical SIM option? Is it worth switching to an eSIM now to be ahead of the curve? And what are the eSIM advantages or disadvantages?

So first off, isn't the iPhone SE also rumored to be eSIM only? Probably. I think so. So I think it's a pilot program. I think I wonder if Apple's modem chip is actually part of the reason here, but also Apple just wants to reduce its reliance on, you know, having to build a little card slot in where it could not, right? So an ingress pullout, all that kind of stuff, you know, having to build a little card slot in where it could not, right? Some ingress pull-out, all that kind of stuff, you know? All of those reasons, right? So I do wonder about that. And for the iPhone 17s as well, unclear what they're going to be able to do, but I would say maybe the SE is a pilot for that.

I would also say, like, Andrew was in this case where Andrew's carrier will do eSIMs and Andrew just hasn't needed to. Well, I was in that boat. I used eSIM or I used regular SIM cards for a long time. And then one time I got a phone that didn't have, they're like, oh, in the US we're not doing that anymore here using eSIM. And I thought, okay. And I switched. So I think some of this may be Apple working with its partners,

probably way in advance, talking about we're going to switch to a phone that does not have a SIM card version. What do you all need to do? How long does this need to be? I would imagine this is a conversation that is not like, I don't think there's a carrier is going to be like, what? Oh, no, right? Like, I don't think that's the case. I think that this stuff, this tech has been out there for a long time. I think it's been going into the market. I think Apple has been talking to its carrier partners. And if Apple is doing an eSIM only phone, it's probably that's worldwide. It's probably because it's pretty confident that its partners are on this. And in terms of eSIM, I haven't had a problem with it. It works really great. I've been able I was worried about being able to transfer it back and forth between like my review phones and my phones that I own and back and forth. Hasn't been a problem. It works. It's very straightforward.

Mostly can do it without any intervention with my carrier at all. You can just transfer it and it transfers. It just hasn't been a problem. So I don't think you necessarily need to switch now. Although, if you're, if you're planning on getting an eSIM phone down the road, the advantage of being on an eSIM now is that it will be that much easier to transfer it later, because you won't have the, you won't have the SIM card and being like, Oh, no, what do I do? And that probably requires you to call your carrier, but not necessarily. You may just be able to log in and request one even then. So it's not that big a deal.

It's come a long way. The advantages are that you can just transfer it digitally. And my favorite thing about eSIMs in general is that you can have multiple and you can have Apple supports you running a couple at once, which allows you to do things like travel and have a second SING active. Or you have a work number and a home number, you could actually put them on the same device if you wanted to.

I use an eSIM and it's on an EE in the UK. So Andrew, let me tell you, it's fine. Because I have lost a couple of years, many years actually, having to get my iPhones in America because they come out when I'm out there for St. Jude. So I had to switch over to an eSIM. The only problem I ever had was doing it the first time, because it was very rare for the UK, because it was new in general. But it's not now.

Now it's super simple to do. And we even did it for Adina, too. It's very easy to actually set it up. And then the moving of it is, it's actually gotten better. It was for the first few years I had to wait until I got home to do the transfer but this year the transfer started working. I figured it wouldn't work because I wasn't in the country but it even did that now. So I think eSIM is fantastic. I recommend it and if you're thinking about upgrading to an iPhone that has it do it beforehand so you can make it even easier

for yourself. Apple has a good part of the setup process where it does it for you during the setup process too now as well. It's kind of included in the backup kind of thing. It will move that across. Yeah, it's backup and migration and it just transfers it over. It's great. Yep.

Yep. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show, and as I mentioned earlier at the top, if you have any questions related to me and not being around for a long time, because I'm going on my paternity leave, go to upgradefeedback.com. Thank you to our members who support us about upgrade plus.

You can go to getupgradeplus.com. You'll get longer ad free versions of the show each and every week. We're gonna talk a little bit about the Super Bowl and some British Airways follow-up, which if you have been an Upgrade Plus subscriber, you'll understand what that might mean. You can find us on YouTube by searching for Upgrade Podcasts

where you can watch video versions of the show. I wanna thank our sponsors one last time. That is Factor, Oracle, Google Gemini, and Ecamm. But most of all, as always, thank you for listening. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, my curly.